Dragonlance Dragonlance Brings New Options to D&D

As expected, Wizards Presents had Dragonlance announcements, starting with a release date – December 6, 2022 – and players will have several choices as to which Dragonlance product they buy.

Like other adventures, Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen, will have two editions: a mass market edition with a cover by Cynthia Sheppard, and an alternative cover edition featuring Lord Soth, only available through game stores. That latter cover, with art by Chase Stone, almost makes his helmet look three dimensional. The 224-page adventure will take players from 1st to 11th level.

Another of the new purchase options is one fans have been clamoring for – bundles of the physical book and a digital copy through D&D Beyond. Those who pre-order the bundle will get their digital copy on November 22, two weeks before the physical book is available. Unfortunately, the digital/book bundle only applies to the standard cover so if you buy alternative covers through your local game store, a digital bundle isn't available.

Additionally, WotC is offering Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen Deluxe Edition, which includes:

• The physical book (Cover by Antonio Jose Manzanedo and Anato Finnstark)
• The digital book via D&D Beyond
• The board game Dragonlance: Warriors of Krynn
• A DM screen

The deluxe edition will cost $154.98 and includes free shipping for the U.S., UK, France, and Germany.

“Dragonlance is really D&D's setting for war, for massive conflicts, for these worldwide, sweeping, world-changing battles” Wes Schneider, Senior Game Designer for D&D and project lead for Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen, said at a press event on August 16. “In this adventure, we're going to take players back to the storied War of the Lance where the forces of the infamous Tiamat, or Takhisis as she is known in Krynn, is marching her armies of evil dragons and draconian dragon folks and other evil humanoids against the people of Krynn, trying to take over the world.”

“In this adventure we're going to see the dragon army's incursion into Solamnia, which is a land of knights and heroes. The players will find themselves at the forefront of this battle in the defense of Solmnia against this evil wave of tyranny,” continued Schneider. “It's not just the fate of a town, it's not just the fate of your pocketbook. It's the fate of the entire world at stake in this.”

Kate Irwin, Principal Art Director for D&D, then talked about demonstrating the expanse of Dragonlance to life through the artwork.

“It's not just plucky band of adventurers going off to do something,” said irwin. “The stakes are very high. So when we were talking about art for this, we asked how do we show that epic expanse of what can happen. Our chapter openers are always a big flashy part of the book so in this case instead of doing a single page piece of art, we're doing a double page piece of art. The artists who are doing the chapter openers were able to focus then on some personal stories and also that great, big expanse of war and see how this is different from other books.”

“We took aspiration from movies and famous photographs from World War I and World War II. The dragon where the adventurers are on top of the dragon was kind of inspired by 'oh, we captured a tank and now we're taking a picture with a tank'.”

“Another thing you don't often see in D&D stories is people riding dragons, partnering with dragons,” added Irwin while talking about what makes Dragonlance different. DLSotDQ features several images of dragon riders, sometimes leading armies.

When talking about a piece of art featuring knights from early in the adventure Irwin said, “I think there's something really relatable even though it's showing this big epic. Like I said, we were taking inspiration from movies like Saving Private Ryan or 1917 where you are involved in the characters that are in the movie, but you're also involved in feeling like a part of something so much bigger.”

That aesthetic ties into the design created by Bree Heiss, Art Director for D&D, for the board game, Dragonlance: Warriors of Krynn. “That Dragonlance through line, that small group fighting against the odds in a world at war is present in the board game, as well.”

For groups playing both the TTRPG and the board game, there will be places where you can switch from RPG to board game to play out a battle and then go back to the RPG. The board game comes with a few “plucky allies” that players can choose, and one such ally is especially dear to Heiss.

“I'm a huge Dragonlance fan, in case that isn't obvious, and I always imagined myself as a Knight of the Rose and I got to, as we were making the figures for the game, I got to have a little bit of input,” said Heiss, “and we wanted our Solamnic knight to be maximum tall, like [Game of Thrones'] Brianne of Tarth, so strong and so big, and I'm so ready to play this. The horns on her helm, she would place [in real life] at 6'5”, 6'7” – she's gonna stomp.”

Iconic Dragonlance villain Lord Soth appears in the adventure, riding a Death Dragon, a new type of undead dragon. Schneider commented that even if people don't know Lord Soth from dozens of stories and adventures that they know him from the Monster Manual.

“Lord Soth is D&D's iconic Death Knight, and when we knew we were returning to the world of Krynn and the Dragonlance campaign setting, we knew we had to have one of D&D's most famous villains central to the threat,” said Schneider.

Draconians were also re-conceptualized for DLSotDQ to clearly distinguish them from dragonborn and other bipedal lizards in D&D. It also plays up the fact that in Dragonlance evil chromatic dragons have been stealing metallic dragon eggs, manipulating them with magic, and turning them into Takhisis' evil foot soldiers. This has both weakened the forces of good and made the adult good dragons hesitate because they'd be fighting their own children.

DLSotDQ also contains a gazetteer. The focus is on eastern Solamnia, though, so don't expect a deep dive into Krynn. A poster map also comes with the book. DLSotDQ is a complete story, not beholden to the novels or prior adventures. Schneider compared it to the new Star Wars TV shows in that you know the beloved heroes are out there doing things but DLSotDQ focuses on different characters in a different region.

DLSotDQ and DLWoK fall “very early in the War of the Lance, early into the invasion of western Solamnia,”said Schneider. “Stories have been told about the major offenses from the middle of the continent further to the west. This is a new story about the very first launch the red dragon army does into Solamnia, an early forey with specific plots and goals to bring a devastating weapon to bear.”

“You're getting not just this massive, epic, D&D narrative adventure in the RPG experience but you also have the Warriors of Krynn board game... and they're meant to weave in and out of each other,” said Schneider.

Schneider then clarified that if you play both, you can take your RPG characters to the board game and then back to the RPG. “Warriors of Krynn isn't your usual moving units and strategy. This is more of a strategy game that focuses on those elements but from a D&D perspective. You're still playing your characters, around the edges of battle, doing what's important to turn the tide of battle, all of the little things that thousands of lives might be riding on. And then once you've played that out you can then take that result back to [Shadow of the Dragon Queen] and have that result affect how your RPG continues.”

However, you do not need DLWoK to play DLSotDQ and vice versa. DLWoK can be played independently from the RPG DLSotDQ. Similarly, if you only want to play the TTRPG, it has instructions on how to handle the battles instead of switching to the board game.

Miniatures that come with DLWoK are the same scale as conventional miniatures, such as WizKids minis. So if you want to use the exact mini for your character while playing the RPG you can bring it right to the board game. The board game also comes with six hero miniatures you can use while playing if you don't have your own minis.

Choices that you make in DLWoK will carry through, but it's not a legacy board game. No cards or such are torn up or removed, but what you do in the board game affects the RPG if you're playing both.

Dragonlance: Warriors of Krynn is a cooperative board game designed by Rob Daviau and Stephen Baker. Back in April at D&D Direct, when asked if DLWoK could be used to stage large-scale battles in other iconic D&D settings, Ray Winninger, Executive Producer of Dungeons & Dragons, said yes, adding that if it does well they'll consider customized versions for other settings.

Pre-orders for the bundles can be placed through dndstore.wizards.com.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Or go the other way.
Do not promote tolerance of minorities because they are not like you. Censorship goes both ways. For good and for bad. But as long as communication exists, you can show the other one the error of its ways. But when you shut that person down, you simply lost. It might seem a victory at first. But in the long run, the silenced one will find others of its kind. This has been proven time and time again in history. And always, the totalitarian finally won and it took decades to recover, if the society recovered at all.

And... what does Hollywood has to do with this?
Edit: And by the way, I never said you could not talk about sensitive matters. It is the censorship that I do not agree with.

You seem to have completely lost the thread of the discussion, because nothing you are saying applies to anything I said in this thread. I have never once advocated for censorship*

So, let's refresh you.

People said that we should not recreate media that included things which, from multiple posters, were mocking those who are neurodivergent. Gully Dwarves, Tinker Gnomes, Fizban. The specific example doesn't matter for the overall point.

Mortus called upon the argument which gets trotted out every single time we say "we shouldn't repeat the mistakes of this decades old piece of media". Which is that we cannot and should not tell people to "change their artistic expression" because these people aren't real, they are fictional, and if we don't let people fully express any and all ideas that are "artistic expressions" then we will have the death of art. No one will make art, because no one will want to offend and everyone will sit reading blank pages in grey featureless rooms (I'm using hyperbole, I know they did not say that directly, but they left a vaguely threatening "Spreading a message for artists to alter or compromise their artistic expression hurts us all." so I'm fine being hyperbolic)

I dislike this argument. I hate this argument. Because it says that you can never critique anything, because criticism kills art. If you tell someone something they did was bad, and that they shouldn't do it again, all art dies and the world is left bereft. ADDITIONALLY, it claims to make a distinction. That having a "fictional" character who is say, Green, and they were enslaved by... let's say Orange people, and they should have been enlsaved by those orange people because it was better for the green people, because they can't self govern is perfectly okay. After all, no real people are green or orange, so I could be saying anything, it is all artistic expression and no one should ever be able to tell me "boo" about that, or all art might die.

Then you came in. And you started making claims that we can interpret any piece of art as anything, so no interpretations hold any weight. It is all just our own bias, and we shouldn't critique anything from any perspective but from the perspective it was written from.

But then you kept tying yourself in knots, making arguments that drifted further and further from the point, until now you are advocating that we shouldn't censor existing work.

Well, go back to the top of the argument. It was never about censoring existing work. It was about NOT recreating a work making the same mistakes it made 40 years ago. It was about telling the writers "hey, this idea you had decades ago? It aged poorly. Many see it as offensive. It probably isn't a good idea to double down on making it this way. Maybe you can find a better way"

Mild critiques. Not assassination attempts to silence political speech, like you made examples of. Not burning books. Not accusing them of being horrible people who deserve to be shamed. The simple idea that we can tell artists "We don't think content like that is appropriate any more and we don't want it. We don't think these matters are for comedy which only punches down."

If a publisher decides not to publish my book because they don't think it will sell. That isn't censorship. You can't force them to publish a book. You cannot compel speech. And that means you have to accept that we can say "No, we don't think this is right" without hounding us about the death of art because we are censoring people. Art will continue. Art has always continued. Art has survived over twelve thousand years of human history. It can survive a mild "do better" from time to time.



*Unless you define censorship as saying, before a work is published, "you shouldn't make that". If that is censorship to you, then Hollywood is one of the most censored locations for media on the planet. Because they have entire departments devoted to "you shouldn't make that" based on sales, common sense, legally binding contracts, ect.

I don't define censorship that way. That isn't what censorship is.

 

[bedir than]

I don't know how stop mocking the disabled via Gully Dwarves became you just want more attacks on Rushdie, but it seems rather silly to claim that Rushdie's art was stopped. He released a dozens of works since the fatwa, spoke at 100s of events. He even did all that despite being credibly accused of abuse of his ex-wife.

Rushdie is just another example that cancel culture doesn't exist.


Also, it remains good that the misogyny and mockery from the original Dragonlance aren't being purely ported over into the revised version

 

[Helldritch]

You seem to have completely lost the thread of the discussion, because nothing you are saying applies to anything I said in this thread. I have never once advocated for censorship*

So, let's refresh you.

People said that we should not recreate media that included things which, from multiple posters, were mocking those who are neurodivergent. Gully Dwarves, Tinker Gnomes, Fizban. The specific example doesn't matter for the overall point.

Mortus called upon the argument which gets trotted out every single time we say "we shouldn't repeat the mistakes of this decades old piece of media". Which is that we cannot and should not tell people to "change their artistic expression" because these people aren't real, they are fictional, and if we don't let people fully express any and all ideas that are "artistic expressions" then we will have the death of art. No one will make art, because no one will want to offend and everyone will sit reading blank pages in grey featureless rooms (I'm using hyperbole, I know they did not say that directly, but they left a vaguely threatening "Spreading a message for artists to alter or compromise their artistic expression hurts us all." so I'm fine being hyperbolic)

I dislike this argument. I hate this argument. Because it says that you can never critique anything, because criticism kills art. If you tell someone something they did was bad, and that they shouldn't do it again, all art dies and the world is left bereft. ADDITIONALLY, it claims to make a distinction. That having a "fictional" character who is say, Green, and they were enslaved by... let's say Orange people, and they should have been enlsaved by those orange people because it was better for the green people, because they can't self govern is perfectly okay. After all, no real people are green or orange, so I could be saying anything, it is all artistic expression and no one should ever be able to tell me "boo" about that, or all art might die.

Then you came in. And you started making claims that we can interpret any piece of art as anything, so no interpretations hold any weight. It is all just our own bias, and we shouldn't critique anything from any perspective but from the perspective it was written from.

But then you kept tying yourself in knots, making arguments that drifted further and further from the point, until now you are advocating that we shouldn't censor existing work.

Well, go back to the top of the argument. It was never about censoring existing work. It was about NOT recreating a work making the same mistakes it made 40 years ago. It was about telling the writers "hey, this idea you had decades ago? It aged poorly. Many see it as offensive. It probably isn't a good idea to double down on making it this way. Maybe you can find a better way"

Mild critiques. Not assassination attempts to silence political speech, like you made examples of. Not burning books. Not accusing them of being horrible people who deserve to be shamed. The simple idea that we can tell artists "We don't think content like that is appropriate any more and we don't want it. We don't think these matters are for comedy which only punches down."

If a publisher decides not to publish my book because they don't think it will sell. That isn't censorship. You can't force them to publish a book. You cannot compel speech. And that means you have to accept that we can say "No, we don't think this is right" without hounding us about the death of art because we are censoring people. Art will continue. Art has always continued. Art has survived over twelve thousand years of human history. It can survive a mild "do better" from time to time.



*Unless you define censorship as saying, before a work is published, "you shouldn't make that". If that is censorship to you, then Hollywood is one of the most censored locations for media on the planet. Because they have entire departments devoted to "you shouldn't make that" based on sales, common sense, legally binding contracts, ect.

I don't define censorship that way. That isn't what censorship is.

As soon as the discourse goes from "I think" to "We think" censorship is showing its ugly head. You can perfectly say that you do not like something. But when you become the spokesperson for an opinion you are willingly or not, starting the process of censorship.

As soon as you say we do not like to see this, you become the spokesman for whomever share your opinion. Some will rally and all of a sudden, that book or whatever is now accused, rightly or wrongly of being something it might or might not be. I much prefer to let people to decide by themselves if a book or piece of art is for them or not.

Do you see the difference?

As for the topic. For me gully dwarves are not an allegory for people with dawn syndrome or whatever disorder you want. They are simply gully dwarves. Nothing more, nothing less. The association you make, is your own. Not mine. Some share your view, some share mine. No stance is better than the other. It is simply a work of fiction, fantasy fiction at that. It should be kept in the domain of the fantasy. Don't like it? The don't buy it. I sure will.

 

[Chaosmancer]

As soon as the discourse goes from "I think" to "We think" censorship is showing its ugly head. You can perfectly say that you do not like something. But when you become the spokesperson for an opinion you are willingly or not, starting the process of censorship.

As soon as you say we do not like to see this, you become the spokesman for whomever share your opinion. Some will rally and all of a sudden, that book or whatever is now accused, rightly or wrongly of being something it might or might not be. I much prefer to let people to decide by themselves if a book or piece of art is for them or not.

Do you see the difference?

No, because "we" refers to me, @AcererakTriple6 and others who have already stated their personal opinions. I'm sorry you don't like it that more than one person has stated something here, and I'm sorry you don't like the fact that people listen to the opinions of other people, but that's just life.

Morbius isn't censored just because I heard it was a crap movie and therefore I have no interest in seeing it. Maybe it is secretly the best movie of all time, but I have finite time, I cannot watch every movie that has ever been released to "decide for myself" what is good or not. I have to pick and choose, and when I hear a bunch of people say it is crap, I'm not going to go out of my way to watch it and see if they are right. And again, that's not censorship, it never has been censorship.

As for the topic. For me gully dwarves are not an allegory for people with dawn syndrome or whatever disorder you want. They are simply gully dwarves. Nothing more, nothing less. The association you make, is your own. Not mine. Some share your view, some share mine. No stance is better than the other. It is simply a work of fiction, fantasy fiction at that. It should be kept in the domain of the fantasy. Don't like it? The don't buy it. I sure will.

Nothing "stays in the domain of fantasy".

The Lord of the Rings didn't come about out of thin air, it was partially created because of Tolkien's experiences in the war, and speaks, softly perhaps, to those experiences.

The Greek Myth about the Minotaur isn't just about a bull-man who was killed by a hero-king, but we are pretty sure it speaks to the geo-political situation between early greek city-states and the Minoan Empire.

You can't wall it off. You can't say "this is fiction, this is fantasy, it has zero connections to the real world". And that's not always a bad thing, but you can't escape it by closing your eyes, plugging your ears, and repeating the mantra. This has never been the case, and it never will be the case as long as we write things which can affect others. Which is the goal of all writing, and especially the goal of fiction.

 

[mamba]

You can't wall it off. You can't say "this is fiction, this is fantasy, it has zero connections to the real world". And that's not always a bad thing, but you can't escape it by closing your eyes, plugging your ears, and repeating the mantra. This has never been the case, and it never will be the case as long as we write things which can affect others.

Agreed, you cannot wall it off, simply because people will make connections to things in the real world, whether intended by the author or not.

That does not mean everyone will make the same connections however, so there will be people that do not find something offensive that you do, and vice versa. Don’t expect to get consensus here.

While Acerak likened Gully Dwarves to down syndrome, I likened them to primitive tribes that have no concept of numbers (yes, that exists). Guess who finds them problematic and who doesn’t

So whether something is problematic is influenced by the association you make, which is outside the author’s control. So either they cannot come up with anything that some people will wrongfully associate and be offended by (which is pretty much impossible), or they have to accept the risk / fact that someone somewhere somehow will manage to be offended by it.

And before you point it out, if your idea is something that a lot of people will associate wrong and be upset by, you should tweak your idea So yeah, Gully Dwarves were probably ok 40 years ago, but I would expect a revision in the new setting.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Agreed, you cannot wall it off, simply because people will make connections to things in the real world, whether intended by the author or not.

That's pretty easy to do with Weis and Hickman's content. As has been mentioned before, they frequently put direct parallels to the real world in their works (Vistani in Ravenloft, all of the Mormon-inspired content in Dragonlance). Whether intended or not, people can put their biases and other problematic content in their works.

While Acerak likened Gully Dwarves to down syndrome, I likened them to primitive tribes that have no concept of numbers (yes, that exists). Guess who finds them problematic and who doesn’t

Gully Dwarves being incapable of counting isn't a culture thing, it's explicitly genetic. They are mentally disabled and incapable of matching the intelligence of other people.

And if they were based on real-world tribes of people with barely any concept of numbers . . . that would be a problem, too.

 

[mamba]

That's pretty easy to do with Weis and Hickman's content. As has been mentioned before, they frequently put direct parallels to the real world in their works (Vistani in Ravenloft, all of the Mormon-inspired content in Dragonlance). Whether intended or not, people can put their biases and other problematic content in their works.

‘all the Mormon-inspired content’, like what ?

That they find golden (might have been platinum actually) disks of a god when the Book of Mormon is an alleged translation of alleged gold tablets ? I have yet to hear of other relations, and this one is so tenuous and insignificant… how about you provide some others, I am starting to suspect that you just want to badmouth DL

Gully Dwarves being incapable of counting isn't a culture thing, it's explicitly genetic. They are mentally disabled and incapable of matching the intelligence of other people.

Where is this explicitly genetic (and not e.g. cultural) ?

And if they were based on real-world tribes of people with barely any concept of numbers… that would be a problem too.

Why ?

 

[bedir than]

‘all the Mormon-inspired content’, like what ?

Hickman says everything

Utahn begins new fantasy series

"DRAGONSHIPS: Bones of the Dragon" by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, Tor Books, 411 pages, $25

www.deseret.com

"I write my faith," he said. "What I do for a living and what I believe are one and the same thing. I don't differentiate between my work and my faith, it's all part of one … I feel strongly that everything I am involved in needs to have a moral and ethical center and needs to address this call to faith."

 

[Cruentus]

Hickman says everything

Utahn begins new fantasy series

"DRAGONSHIPS: Bones of the Dragon" by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, Tor Books, 411 pages, $25

www.deseret.com

Are you sure that's saying what you think it does? Writing his "faith" about things like "brotherhood, cultural divides, and bridging differences" and "seeking salvation and returning to your creator and home" doesn't sound particularly earthshattering, or out in left field. Like, don't all religions believe in this in one way or another? And wouldn't any author with any kind of strong faith bring their background, learnings, and leanings into their writing? How could you not? I mean, as an author, you usually write what you know, and your totality of experience informs what and how you write. I don't get it.

I started reading the bible, since I never had. Good thing no one is trying to write the bible today...

As others have said, if you don't like it, fine, don't buy it. But you also don't need to come into the same thread over and over and tell us how you don't like it. We get it. Or should I say, I get it.

As I said before, as a family member of someone with Down's, I never made or saw the connection some here do, and I'm sensitive to it. I read the books, enjoyed them, but the writing style doesn't hold up for me. That, and I can't stand Tasslehof, so I'll skip new stuff that includes him.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

‘all the Mormon-inspired content’, like what ?

That they find golden (might have been platinum actually) disks of a god when the Book of Mormon is an alleged translation of alleged gold tablets ? I have yet to hear of other relations, and this one is so tenuous and insignificant… how about you provide some others, I am starting to suspect that you just want to badmouth DL

The bringing back of the true dead religion because of some metal plates, the Cataclysm is based on the Great Apostasy from Mormon theology, the Native American influence, the whole balance between good and evil (a core part of Mormon beliefs is that good can only exist because of evil, and Dragonlance very much promotes the balance between good and evil), et cetera. Trust me, I grew up Mormon. I recognize the connections.

Where is this explicitly genetic (and not e.g. cultural) ?

The Dragonlance Wiki makes it seem like it is, and as far as I know, there's no example of an intelligent Gully Dwarf in the fiction. If it truly was cultural, then there would be an example in the fiction of it just being a culture. If there isn't, then it's logical to assume that it's genetic.

Why ?

Because turning a real-world culture of people into a joke race is a bad idea.